The production of metallized textile fabrics is a field of colossal potential for growth. Metallized textile surfaces find numerous fields of application. Especially metallized textile surfaces can be used for example as heating mantles, also as fashion articles, for example for luminous textiles, or for producing textiles useful in medicine including prophylaxis, for example for monitoring organs and their function. Metallized textile surfaces can further be used to screen off electromagnetic radiation.
It is desirable to provide textiles with articles needing or generating electric current, for example transistors or photocells. However, the attempt to fix such articles on fabrics such that they acquire a contact with electric current, presents difficulties. If an attempt is made to incorporate electrically conducting wires in films, specific apparatus is required.
Especially existing processes for producing such metallized textile surfaces, however, are still very costly, inconvenient and inflexible. Specific equipment is needed and it is not possible to use traditional apparatus such as conventional weaving looms for example. It is known for example to incorporate metal threads in textile. However, in many cases it is not possible to combine for example copper threads and polyester threads satisfactorily with each other to form wovens, since specific looms are needed.
It can be attempted to circumvent the above-described disadvantage by incorporating metal threads in a completely made-up textile. Such a procedure, however, generally requires a lot of work by hand and is costly.
The use of electroconductive polymeric fibers has the additional disadvantage that many electroconductive polymers such as anoxidized polypyrrole for example are air and/or moisture sensitive.